Does anyone think it odd how gay men don’t have their own specific term in the LGBTQIA+ community? You have to think about it a bit before you really notice, but really think about it. Gay can define any gender that is part of the community or those who have partners of the same sex. But if you go into it women who only prefer partners of the same sex are labeled as lesbian, people who choose partners of either sex are labeled as bisexual and under bisexual there is pansexual. Then you have transgender men and women who, sadly, a lot of people don’t care to understand what it means. You also then have people who are questioning themselves and who people label or identify as queer. You have the “I” standing for intersex and then finally people labeled as asexual or it can stand for our many allies. But there is not a specific, special term for a gay man.

I think that should change. The term gay does branch out for all genders but there are other specific terms just for them, such as lesbian or bisexual. So my question is, why don’t men have a specific term for themselves? Don’t they deserve their own term? Aren’t they just as important and just as deserving as others under the LGBTQIA acronym?

It can also be argued that it’s sexist for gay men to only be called “gay.” If you really start to think about it it’s as if they are above us with their label because it also stands for anyone who is part of the community. By claiming the gay label they are almost owning the entire gay scene, making them more authentically gay than all others.

So what you think? Should there be a new name for gay men? If so, what came should be given? How do we decide? How many of you think we should make a new name?

We make up names and words all the time, so let’s make a new name. We can make it anything we want, put the word out to everyone of the new name, and what it means to identify as it.

It can get confusing, however, for people to hear what all the labels we have mean. What if we take away the labels instead? We can just say “I’m me, I am who I am and I’m not going to label myself.” If we don’t label ourselves, we just say we are who we are. Could there be a negative reaction to it?

I think that it can help many people if labels are thrown away, but it can also confuse many people who are trying to discover who they are and what they like and what they want to do in life. Would it be such a terrible thing to let everyone figure out that they can, and should, say that they are who they are and no one can change or control it?